1. SKC, Inc. Internship Report
Bill H. Hervol
Manufacturing Engineer
MAY
SKC, Inc. is a company that manufactures air sampling equipment. Before I got this
internship I started to give up hope that I wasn’t going to get one. It wasn’t even a few
days after I had that thought that Scott had contacted me. Scott Marshall is the Quality
Assurance supervisor at SKC, Inc. After Scott and I talked for a while, it was clear that this
internship was going to be good for me. I was extremely nervous the first day and had no
idea what to expect. I was supposed to working alongside Johnathan O’Brien but he was
gone on vacation. While John was away and I was not yet set up with a computer or a
desk, Scott took me around to see all of the other buildings, what goes on in those
buildings, and who I should talk to in those buildings. There are nine buildings on site.
Building one is where all the glass tubes are cut and shaped to the right dimensions. This is
also where they add the “fuzzies” or the filters that go inside the tubes to test for any
unwanted chemicals in the air. Building two is where most of the offices are. Building
three is where the engineers are, where most DMR’s (defective material report) are, and
where the air pressure checkers are. Building four is the warehouse. This is where their
orders come in, get logged, and sent to the area or building that they belong to. Building
five is the production building. This is where Don, Scott, and Shane are. These guys handle

2. the first article inspections. This building is also where most of the training and larger
meetings take place. Building six is the machine shop. This is where some of the more
impressive tools are like the comparator. The comparator can get a really accurate
dimension reading by projecting a shadow of the part on a bigger screen above the stage
where the part sits on and you physically have to move the on screen ruler and it will tell
you the dimension. The comparator is a really cool machine to work with. This building is
also where they assemble their air sampling bags. Building seven is a chemical lab and
houses some of the chemical equipment. Larissa is the supervisor for the chemical labs.
Building ten is pretty much a storage shed. There is no building nine though. Building eight
is where I work. This building has a chemical lab on one side and the quality department
on the other. The chemical lab in building eight is where cassettes are put together. Anne
and Virginia assemble the plastic ends of the cassettes and then puts a band around them
that shrinks when they dry. That band shrinks up around the cassettes and holds them
together so no other impurity can get in. On the other side is where John and I work. We
also have Jim and Justin in our room as well. Jim is the maintenance guy and handles a lot
of problems almost daily. Justin is the grounds keeper and helps Jim out from time to time.
John and I handle the incoming inspections. John is also the assistant administrator and
handles a lot of the networking at SKC. SKC deals with a third party networking company
named DMS. John is trying to completely take over their responsibilities as well as his in
quality. In our area, we use calipers, micrometers, pin gauges, and other test parts to make
sure the new parts we are receiving will successfully work with their mating parts and make
a flawless product for the customer. While John was away on vacation, Scott had set me

3. up at John’s computer for the time being. Even though I could not access his computer or
any files on the network, Scott had kept me busy. I inspected samples of parts and made
sure that all of their dimensions were within tolerance, according to their drawings. I also
helped file and reorganized a lot of their calibration certificates for the equipment that
they used. Just before John got back from his vacation, I then went on my vacation.
JUNE
After I had returned from my vacation, John had a desk, some filing cabinets, and a tablet
set up for me.
The tablet was set up to run a full desktop set up and serve as a second screen next to my
monitor. At first, Scott and I could not get everything to run properly. After John had

4. gotten back, he got everything hooked up correctly and started it up. He then had to email
DMS, SKC’s third party networking company, to get my password so that I could finally log
into my computer. After I finally got to log in, I didn’t have access to the network. John
had to send another email to DMS and they finally got my networking issue out of the way.
After a few more emails to DMS, John had me set up and logged into my SKC email, the
Autodesk Vault that they use to store all of their drawings, and Fourth Shift, the software
that they use that has information on their vendors, cost of parts, purchase order
information, and location of parts. John had sat with me and talked me through most of
their procedures for inspection. There was a whole folder on one of their drives that
contained every single inspection of every single part that they have on file. In that folder I
would have to open up the file of the part number, find the master file for that and open it.
In that mast file I would have to change the purchase order, quantity, quantity of samples
being inspected, follow the notes in the document to do a thorough inspection of that part,
then add any extra notes that would be important for someone else to see, and then
changed the date and save it as the part number then the current date and save it into that
same part folder. After the first week of June, there was a certain issue that Scott wanted
me to handle. There were metal parts that screwed together that SKC had received in the
past. The bottom metal ring’s threads were too close making a really tight fit and
destroying the grooves of the top rings. After we received the new ones, I had to go
through every single top and bottom and make sure that they would screw completely on
without any resistance. I had to screw some tops on about half way and then unscrew
them so that I could break the threads before trying to screw them on all the way.

5. Above is a picture of these parts. On the left are the bottoms. On the right, the metal
rings on the cardboard strips, are the top metal rings that I had to make sure would fit.
Some of the rings would get tight but after muscling them a little they would screw off
“breaking” the threads. Some would be able to screw completely on afterwards. Others

6. got stuck… I almost destroyed my hand trying to get some of those rings off. To the left
is a picture of my hand after trying to get some of those rings off. My fingers were
almost raw and I had calluses there the next day. I
was so worried about getting the rings off that I
went next door to Anne and Ginger to ask them if
they had anything that could help get those rings off.
Ginger suggested the heat gun that they had. I
brought the pieces that were stuck together over
and we heated them up for about ten minutes. I put
some heat gloves on and used a rubber opener to try
and get them back off but they still wouldn’t come
off. After they cooled down, I took them over to
Scott and let him know of the issue. I dropped off
the rest of those metal pieces for him as well. I
never heard anything else of that issue so I assumed that the vendors fixed the problem.
Towards the middle of June and going into early July there was huge issue that came
through to John and I. The plastic adjustable flow holders, which go on the end of
rubber hoses to test for air quality, had cracks in the tops where the aluminum inserts
were heat pressed in. Most of the cracks were about an eighth of an inch wide or
smaller. Some had just a hairline crack in the top. Scott had put me in charge of
inspecting the entire few thousand lot that we had of these. The majority of these
plastic parts were cracked badly enough that you could see them from a good distance

7. away. After looking at them under magnification and determining the bad from the
good, there were a few hundred of them that were ok to send to customers. The
engineers had discovered that some of those parts that we had and were using from a
few years ago were cracked just as bad. This peaked a lot of questions at SKC. Shortly
after the discovery, Scott, the engineers, and the vendor go into a huge discussion about
what was causing these cracks. Scott thought that the temperature before or after the
heat pressing of the aluminum inserts had something to do with it. The vendor that it
was the oil that they used was possibly too corrosive. John was dragged into this issue
as well. He mainly emails and talks with the vendors directly if there is a huge issue like
this. After speaking to the vendor, John found out that the vendor had their home
makers put some of these parts together without heat pressing them and discovered
that there weren’t any cracks. Even after this discovery, no one wanted to take
responsibility for this issue.
JULY
Shortly after this very long discussion about the flow holders, I was informed that we
needed to fill as many orders as quick as we could. Now we couldn’t use any of the bad
flow holders, but we could use everything else that was attached to them. I had to go
back through the few thousand bad ones and take off all of the rubber ends and keep all

8. of the brass pin screws separate. After I disassembled all those parts, I had to rush all of
those extra parts down to the machine shop so that they could put those on the good
flow holders that they had on hold that weren’t completely assembled yet. Once they
got all of those parts they could reassemble them and finally start filling some of the
smaller orders. After everything was all said and done this was the result. There were
about 650 that were bad and got scrapped.
I felt like I helped out a lot and actually had a purpose at SKC after this big issue. A little
while later, Scott had put me in charge of a little project. He wanted me to go around to
every building and make a list of every piece of equipment that SKC employees use to
determine the quality of parts. He needed me to make a list of the description of the
equipment being used, the ID or serial number of that piece of equipment, the date that
it got calibrated last, and the date that it was due for a calibration. Scott has a huge
binder full of calibration certificates that go with every piece of equipment being used at

9. SKC. After I got everything listed, I went by building and cross referenced with the
calibration certificates to reorganize those certificates by buildings. The purpose of this
project was to make it easier, for either Scott or anyone else who was looking for certain
items that needed calibrated, to quickly find what building they were in and then to go
acquire it. Shortly after this little project, SKC underwent an upgrade for Fourth Shift.
The upgrade required certain programs to be compatible with the new version. It also
required John to have full administrative privileges. Between the third party
networking company, John, and Spencer (the other guy who works with their
networking) there were a lot of issues and John was busy trying to get everything
running properly on everyone’s computers. Scott was also busy with certain Fourth
Shift issues. While everything was being taken care of, I had very little to do. I would
come in and take care of the incoming inspections, then I’d ask Scott if there was
anything else that he needed me to do. If there wasn’t much else that he needed during
that upgrade I’d ask to leave early because I didn’t want to keep bothering John or Scott
for extra work while they were handling an issue that was much more important than I
was at that time. When the Fourth Shift upgrade was finally completely and everything
was running smoothly, everything seemed to slow down. At least things slowed down
for me. I was back to just doing regular inspections. If certain parts came in that
required a first article inspection, I’d fill out the necessary paper work, print it out, and
send that along with two samples to production to do a thorough inspection and double
check all of the changes that were made to that part. Towards the end of July we finally

10. received more of those plastic adjustable flow holders that I had inspected earlier in the
month. Out of the twenty that I had received as a
sample to inspect, I only found one with a very
small crack in the top. Above is a picture of the
one part that I found the crack in. To the right is a
side view of the crack showing that it was cracked
all the way to the base of the part. After a couple
more weeks of some everyday inspections, I got
some bad news. One of my cousins who I was
very close with had passed away. Unfortunately I
didn’t get a chance to work in August.
My parents had planned a vacation the
first week of August. My dad has his
own business and while he was away,
he wanted me to stay home to make
sure everything was running smoothly.
After the funeral and after my parents
got home, I got a chance to have a
meeting with Scott. According to their

11. records, I had amounted 240 hours. He stated that all the work that I was faced with, I
had done a great job in handling it. I was also offered to stay and work at least up until I
started the next semester. I was very happy about that offer.
WHAT I LEARNED
I learned a lot at this internship. Even though it wasn’t a direct manufacturing
engineering field related job, I still got to see the manufacturing process from start to
finish. I got to see how parts were brought in from the vendors, how the parts went
through inspections (or first article inspections if they were required), how the parts
were sent back to inventory or stock, and then how they got shipped either back to the
vendor if there was an issue or straight to customer. I also go to learn how to use some
really cool equipment. I got to use the Keyence machine to accurately measure multiple
parts and multiple dimensions. I also go to use an optical comparator to measure
certain dimensions. I used many other basic tools such as calipers, micrometers, pin
gauges, and depth gauges. Above everything else, I got to meet and work with some
really nice people and some very professional people as well. I had a great experience
with great people in a relaxed environment.